Chrysalis

[What do you see?]

[Much, prey. Dangerous.]

[Let me take a look.]

The vision was blurry, incomplete, but enough to show that the assessment was correct. They couldn’t go this way.

[Alright. Come back. Make sure you aren’t seen.]

Columbant withdrew her awareness from her distant pet, the small cavern in which she crouched snapping back into focus with disorienting clarity. Even after advancing the Skill to the second rank, it was still difficult to use, especially over a distance.

We can’t use that path, she thought to herself, which is going to severely limit our options. Are we cut off?

She consulted her tunnel map and began to plot out the routes still available to her. They’d ranged far from the meeting point, but there were still five days left before she was due to rendezvous with Magellant. She just hadn’t expected monster activity to be so high in this area.

[What do you think, Mistress? Shall we fight our way out?]

Her smartest pet, Rist, had long worked out how precarious their circumstances were. The flame demon had a good mind and a flair for fire magic, but was often too eager to engage, a tendency she had to be mindful of.

[It’s not ideal,] she confessed before she began to sketch out a rough version of her tunnel map on the floor with one leg. [We currently sit between two expanses that are unusually close together. This one is the shadow coral reef we explored earlier, this one we haven’t been into, but I suspect is a shadow swamp type. The spillover of monsters between the two is flooding the tunnels around us and causing the monsters to be higher tiers than I expected. If we try and fight our way out, we need to make it through these three junctions.]

She indicated the points where the tunnels met with an antenna while she continued to sketch with her leg. As she spoke, Rist watched with his ever-burning eyes, carefully taking in her words.

density, we might end up pulling more monsters down on our heads

said, a

really an option,] Columbant shook her head. [The death mana is just too thick in the stone down here. It’s sapping the life out of me even to touch

again experiencing the strange draining sensation she’d felt before. They could still dig through, but it would take more than

said

would sacrifice them if needed to save her own life, but

refuted. [We will all make it. I have a plan. Quietly train your Skills and wait for Slither to return. I need to

his fire manipulation, twisting the flame into shapes and making them dance on his palm. Columbant skittered

beetle-beast groaned as the jagged wound across her flank began to seal over, bit by bit. A day after the fight that caused it, the tear, two metres long across the

girl?]

from her shell, letting her

[Ready,] she insisted.

[No, girl. Not yet.]

[Ready!]

a pain in

some more food into you, and then you’ll

for another round of healing magic as well. Combined with a bit of Biomass, it would nearly be enough

experience. You have

Was Slither alright? She resisted the urge to reach out to him. He needed to

as she waited for the shadow creature to return, sighing with relief when he finally dropped down from the narrow opening above. A slug-variant of her own creation, Slither splatted onto the ground before reforming himself. Without a word, he crawled to where

said.

gratitude rolling off

the food